Texas Instruments Blaze tablet development platform coming in August

Texas Instruments’ OMAP4 Blaze platform uses an ARM Cortex A9-based chipset which is capable of handling HD video. It also features support for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, and cellular data. In other words, it has everything you need to develop a nice healthy smartphone… or a tablet.

SVTronics will start offering a Texas Instruments Blaze tablet development device in August. The tablet is aimed at developers, not the general public. But it looks pretty interesting, with a 1GHz OMPA4430 CPU, 10.3 inch, 1024 x 768 pixel multitouch display, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage, and 2 USB ports and HDMI output.

There’s also an accelerometer, gyroscope, temperature sensor, ambient light sensor, and proximity and pressure sensors. The tablet has a memory card slot, SIM card slot, a headset jack, and a miniPCIe slot for a modem — the tablet can support 3G, LTE, or other wireless technologies.

There’s a 5MP camera module that can be connected externally.

The tablet has an aluminum frame and measures 10.5″ x 8.3″ x 1.1″. It has a 4100mAh single-cell battery.

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Cortex A9 devices like those with TI’s OMAP4 will change the world of computing.

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I wonder when we’ll see less expensive development boards for OMAP4… the less expensive Blaze sEVM4430 is available for a mere $1799, the above Blaze Tablet will go for $2259. In contrast, you can get OMAP3 boards for under $200, e.g. the previously mentioned Beagle Board and Gumstix Overo start at $149, though these are just bare boards, need some peripherals to start playing…

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Any word on what the touch digitizer is?

I think most “developers” will opt for existing platforms .. this is insane pricing wise.

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The problem is, as far as I can tell, there is no other off-the-shelf OMAP4 development platform currently. The alternative is for you to design and manufacture your own board, and that will take a lot longer and cost way more than $2K-$3K than just buying one of these.

That level of detail isn’t provided for the Blaze tablet yet, but the already existing Blaze mobile development platform uses a Synaptics capacitive touch sensor–actually, it has two of them, since it has two 3.7″ touchscreens on it.

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Ah, got it – thanks for that info.

And yes, you’re right, it seems there isn’t a platform outside of TI. I think it might be safe to say at this point the main target is “OEMs,” not “developers” in a broader sense. But it’s promising stuff, platform-wise (we saw some of this back around Feb). I wonder what sort of timeframe there may be for OEMs to get onboard.

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It sounds like some thing the iPAD should have been. It has been – for me any way – a long time since I read about Texas Instruments haveing a computer. I still have my TI-99/4A. It was a great computer for the time it was out. It would be neat to see it produced and – hopefully – at a reasonable price.

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7 years ago

Texas Instruments Blaze tablet for developers is right around the corner

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